Friday Letter - 03.15.2012

3/15/12

Dear RiverRun Families,

This week we have been getting ready for our trip to the Albany Institute of Art and History. I have prepared works on Ancient Egypt and have been reading to the class about ancient Egypt. The Egyptians believed in many gods. The children can identify Ra, Thoth, Nephthys, Anubis, Horus, Isis, Ma'at and Osiris. They are also familiar with many different artifacts which were found by archeologists and had great meaning to the ancient Egyptians. This is a topic of high interest; the field trip will help keep the spark of interest going.

I want to thank the Foster family for lending us some great works for the children to use related to ancient Egypt. I also want to thank our families for letting your children bring in their rocks for their classmates to examine.

Lessons have been given on dynamic subtraction and the Multiplication Bead Board to the first years and most have started novel study. They are reading Mouse Soup by Arnold Lobel.

The middles and elders had a lesson on types of quadrilaterals (rhombus, trapezoid, square, rectangle and parallelogram).

The elders have been introduced to another work to aid in memorization of multiplication math facts.

In Physical Education this week we went outside and set up skip rope, ring toss and bean bag throw stations since it was so nice out. During the downpour on Thursday we had indoor P.E. We played Raid the Food Pantry, which was a lot of fun and taught the children about the food pyramid.

Juliana, Liam's mom, has been coming in consistently to work with the children on sign language. Last week the children learned how to sign forms of transportation.

Carrie, the music teacher, has put the children into choir positions, and they have started to prepare songs for their spring concert/play to be held in early June. They learned a new call and response song that you may hear your child chanting at home.

Things and dates to remember:
We are collecting plain colored top sheets to use for costumes for our class play. If you have some you are no longer using, we'll take them.

Insect repellent if you would like your child to use it prior to playing in the woods

March 23- Field trip to the Albany Institute of Art & History
March 31- RiverRun community social outing at Lisha Kill Preserve hiking
April 6- Field trip to Regional Food Bank
April 9-13- Spring break
April 24- Field trip to Merry Hill
April 27- School pictures